The Fix-it God, part 1

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The Fix-it God idea is characterized by approaching God primarily as the One who addresses human problems by fixing them. This is the popular and time consuming proposition and practice of those who encourage believers to approach God exclusively on the basis that Messianic salvation is not only salvation from sin but that He has one response to human problems, namely instant and miraculous fixes. There is a Fix-it God in the Bible. The Serpent in the Wilderness narrative offers a view that God heals His people of life’s fatal bites. The snakebite healing was not salvation in the sense that humans are saved from sin, because the journeying Israelites were not unsaved persons. Yahweh had already saved the entire family of the Sons of Israel in the Exodus. The Fix-it God is therefore a picture of maintenance and ongoing healing to saved persons. We find in Moses’ narrative that divine healing is indeed on tap for the Israelites as they journeyed.

“And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died”

Num. 21:6-9

The Fix-it God delivers needed healing for those on salvation’s journey. In this mode of divine intervention the invitation to healing is “Look and live”,

And Yahweh said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall be, that every one that is bitten, when he looks on it, shall live. Numbers 21:8

One could say that salvation from sin or the inheritance of life does come in exactly the same way. It is a “look and live” proposition. For example there is the global call found in Isaiah 45:22

Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.

There is too the Pauline teaching (2 Cor. 3:18) that by gazing at Christ we access ongoing change towards the divine image. There is the prophecy of Micah (7:7) which expresses confidence in the saving power of God as one (the saved) looks to God and waits.

Is everything we call a problem a problem to God? On realizing that there are problems which are unresolvable by us and which need divine intervention, we can either find God’s answer or park our brains, set our mouth on automatic and recite all the things that earthlings and believers have ever said, looking for a way to use faith as a battering ram, when we should simply and first of all say “Amen”.

There is nothing wrong with confessing to Houston “We have a problem!” Learning to say “Amen” to wherever God places us is the right attitude setting with which we can console ourselves. We can also seek to be elevated to God’s thinking and operation, at which level we deceive ourselves with the emotional, unsubstantiated and unscriptural idea that (1) God wants to fix everything and (2) we only need to confess it or declare/decree it.

Does God face unsolvable problems?

No. Frankly, nothing is a problem to God. His healing power is not incidental. He does not rise as healer when sickness arises. Our appreciation of Yahweh as Salvation or Messiah as Salvation is our acknowledgement of the salvation that is in the godhead eternally. Our Lord’s eternal place as Son in the Godhead is inseparable from his place as pre-foundation Salvation.

Few fixes in nature and civic life

The evidence all around us is that God does not fix everything, whether we ask in faith or not. He knows every situation and condition in which we find ourselves and He chooses what gift to bestow and when to bestow it. We deny that we are related to God through and in Christ, acting as if His love must be expressed in giving us everything we ask for. His thinking, at the micro-level, is often beyond our ideas and beyond our capacity to perform. We are often not even listening to his voice.

Restoration and birth from above

What need is there in the church’s assemblies for the sentiment that there is no such thing as cross-bearing trials and adversities? No-one knows or can know the power of God in both its once-for-all manifestation and in its ongoing revelation and bestowal of a sanctified life, except through the weakness and humility of mortal life. Our only guaranteed victory is over the problem of the carnal and worldly nature.

The ultimate fix

The difference between what is possible and what is probable should not elude us. Just as the difference between the present and the future should be equally clear to all of us. The difference between what God wants and what He does is also clear – He wants all men to be saved, yet many are being lost. Since this is true for physical and mental disabilities how can it not be true for tears, death and sorrow?

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. (Rev. 21:4)

Elbert Joseph, PhD

Sorry story

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Those apologies are like the rubber that fears the road …

Remorse, tears, changed behaviour, pledges to comply, and expressions of guilt and sorrow are all part of the human apparatus for dealing with God’s surprising and free offer to the Jewish people and the world.

The popular and passionately declared explanations of repentance and the life that follows the saving gift of faith are woefully grace-free and thankless.

A lot of wrecked ship litter the landscape of the spiritual quest. There are among the thousands of mega church members a mere handful of the elect; one in four to be precise. For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Do not copy without permission. All rights reserved. Elbert E. Joseph.

Eternal life is strictly a Messianic feature

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Forever is a concept that we have trouble expressing because the future aspects of eternity are accessible to us only as foretaste, and the past aspects are revealed to us in snippets or highligjts of God’s wonders and great love. Most of us would love it if the story of eternal life contained the miraculous and power-soaked liberation of our ethnic group or nation. Not one millimetre of truth’s golden thread survives unshredded in the book of Exodus, because eternity and the human experience of it can never be achieved by a risky covenant in the hands of mortal creatures and that remains wholly a Messianic function.

John 6:51 has the primary offer (covenant or testament) of which no part appears in the books that narrate divine interventions in ancient Israel.

I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

No mention of eternal life exists in the Pentateuch except Genesis 3:22

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”–

The best a keeper of the Sinai covenant could expect was to be “not far from the kingdom” because priestly kingdom people were always going to lack faith, hope and love. We and our children will always be learning and reciting and never acknowledge the truth. The ungodly has the law and the just has the Father’s great love and lifegiving oath.

When Yeshua tells one of his contemporaries that he shall live if he complies with the covenant he was not addressing the life in the kingdom of God. Long life was a function of respect for one’s parents.

If you want to be accurate there are six commands (5 prohibitions and one injunction) in the path to life saying in Matthew 19.

Comments turned off regulate gutter flow

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A new and overdue feature of many news and information sites is that comments are turned off.  Without investigating everyone or even a sample I rest comfortably in the position of my own blog.  You visit, you read,  you copy, you, download, because you are free.  I remain uninterested in uninformed banter.  I am not interested in debate. Most discussions of biblical matters wind up in a gutter. I am not an opinion-monger.

The frequent and the rare

How many times does God liberate a people from slavery and abuse, and offer them some one else’s land? How often are people asked to build a tent strictly for worshipping God and for seeking his approval and relief?  The answer to both questions is once.

Both rare and frequent events deserve the label biblical but saying that food and drink are biblical matters misses the point that divine interests change. You will not convince the millions who are tuned in to the Bible that God in the 21st  century wants the smell of burning animal fat, roasted beef, goat, mutton, or bird as part of the human response to his goodness.  You will not have a leg to stand on if you are telling males who are seeking God that they need to be circumcised.  This is why it is important to have the right division of the text, the correct interpretation of whatever we read.  Something important can happen a lot – even happen every day and all the time –  and yet it is irrelevant to the kingdom of God, like circumcision.  If a thing such as circumcision that defines Judaism (or defines a Jew) is irrelevant to God it means that Jewishness and all of the claims of Judaism aimed at the global community are irrelevant.

No discussion

How do the holy speak with the unholy? Do they repeat the divisive terms of their respective camps and expect understanding?  Does each have terms that the other does not and cannot be expected to possess?

I know that all the sayings about obedience are bound to splatter all over the walls and drip to the floor because no record exists to corroborate the obedience of a single generation.  The case has been made that no human at any stage of development or enlightenment has been found in full and perfect compliance with what God wants. The proof of that is the fact that God waited four millennia to unlock his master plan,  during which time no human candidate arose to redeem the human race.

Turned off and tuned out

The social media operators have empowered public comment without recognizing that comments do not always arise from thought and reflection. In political and religious circles nothing is fixed or established as long as someone can say something “what-aboutish” or several things completely unrelated to a topic and stay in the conversation as a contributor. There is an end to chiming in that is welcome and the public comment frenzy deserves its demise.

Follies of the sacred

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Praying can expose the gaps in growth as a child of God. Things we say in life’s most important conversation open the window to a courtyard of fear and misinformation. We want to know the name of the god who responds to a request for cleaning if God’s policy is to ignore a sinner’s (=believer’s) prayers. This is where people can end up if their understanding of prayer gets shaped by ancient sacred buildings.

People can get so caught up in symbols, signs, food, drink, rituals and regulations that they lose sight of reality.  The case can hardly be better made than with trying to make prayer conform to the tabernacle service.

The main problem is one of presence.  When exactly is the believer in God’s presence? Is there an outer court, a laver, a place for preliminaries to prayer?
A disturbing practice is followed by people who think they cannot speak to God or hear from him without first  becoming sinless. This is not becoming sinless by not sinning. It is BECOMING SINLESS BY PARDON which is where all Christians begin.

  • Who ever came up with that one is a raving genius of nonsense.
  • God has to hear or respond to sinners
  • The process for getting saved is “sinner calls on the Lord’s name”
  • The sinner (any believer) surely cannot ask the same God who “does not hear sinners” for a cleansing from all sin  so that one’s prayer can be heard.

I know who says that prayer, but who hears that prayer?

The immorality of Government mandates

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(It’s not necessarily governments that will restrict what you do without vaccination. Private business can and will hold you accountable in many, many ways.)

Since when did government need to get the approval of every citizen before imposing its will? Since when did a dozen religions, four political parties and score of First Nations decide what is moral in Canada? If Christianity and Judaism, sharing a guidebook, do not agree on what is immoral how can we expect Islam or any other religious group (with divergent narratives of the common “book”) to align with the so-called Judeo-Christian foundations of western societies?

Immorality does not begin or end with the restriction or affirmation of rights. What right is it that one defends to make neighbours sick and leaves oneself exposed to death? We are phishing for individual rights that override the common safety and integrity. It is the same problem that plagues the union movement: individuals wanting their situation to define the interests of the collective. Freezing temperatures in hell will mark the beginning of the era when human rights are secondary to ignorant and insensitive privilege.

Chauvinist and holy

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I return to a topic that is the spiritual equivalent of a 13 dollar coin.  It is an issue that has to be near the top of standards for decency and civilized behaviour.  When the Scriptures opens up with woman as the better part of humanity and closes with a stunning movie of an unnamed woman I find it horribly uncaring of a great many people who say they are God’s friends and representatives of God and light-bearers.  One little word in Genesis exposes the inventions of misogynist crew, wherever they come from.  Let us be sure that while people are said to be in the loins of their ancestors before they are born it bears repeating that help a male needs to be complete is necessarily female and must be recognized as his out-front part, his better “half”, his kĕneged ( כנגד ) aspect.

Shame is a lot more than a private part

It does not shock me that the commentaries on the creation of the human race fail to build an understanding of males and females in their primary arrangement.  It is a senseless plot that people undertake when they try to pattern their associations after the Levitical system’s males-only policy and practice.   Women are pushed aside from the centre of the action and authority and then flattered with the idea that they have functions that are uniquely designed for only certain contributions to family and social life.  If differing standards of  public dress and undress do not convince anyone that patriarchy’s male dominance is a stage in man’s ignorance..

Woman clothed with the sun and more

What does kenegdo mean in the Genesis creation narrative?  In front of, before, opposite as equal, beside (fanciful nonsense from the rib narrative), or partner of lesser function and value?

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help suitable for him.

Genesis 2:18

The Revelation 12 Saga

The answer to the question of the meaning of neged comes in a vision of a woman. Her clothing and adventures are beyond scrutiny.

  • And there appeared a great wonder in heaven;
  • a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
  • And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered
  • And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.  And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
  • And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
  • And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

We have it in apostolic teaching and from the practice of Christ that gender, ethnicity,  social status, or nationality are inadmissible as measurements of people. The Taliban and those who see themselves as conserving (protecting) are barking up a tree John the Baptist said was ready for felling. 

The entire story of divine government of the globe is told in the woman’s experience in Revelation12. The salvation experience is cast as the betrothal and marriage of a woman to the Son of God. How dare anyone shape the church’s identity and operations as male-only? They dare because they are forgivably mistaken, confused about the incompatibility of chauvinism and holiness. The proponents of male domination forgets that our spiritual heritage is specifically inclusive of women as we find it predicted in Joel 2:29; “Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days”. The Holy Spirit’s residence establishes the dignity of men and women or not at all.